“Are you coming?” a marine sergeant asked.
Walleye nodded, wondering what was really going on.
-20-
Jon stood in the main science lab with Gloria, listening to Chief Technician Ghent explain what they’d discovered by taking apart what remained of the AI conversion unit recovered from Samuel Latterly’s brain.
Jon’s shoulder throbbed from the assassin’s bullet and the surgery to repair the shoulder. An outer casing kept his shoulder and side immobile. The shoulder not only throbbed but itched like crazy. He was finding it impossible to get comfortable. He’d taken mild painkillers, as he didn’t want to dull his wits with strong ones.
Jon shifted his stance yet again.
Most of the conversion unit’s components lay under a glass sheet on a large table. Various letters were affixed to the separate pieces of AI technology.
Ghent glanced now and again at his tablet as he told them what they knew about the conversion unit so far.
“It’s a disgusting technology,” Gloria said, interrupting the Chief Technician’s monologue. “I’ve read Walleye’s report about what happened on Makemake.” She shook her head. “The AIs are worse than inhuman. They’re monsters.”
“Is Walleye still in detention?” Jon asked.
Gloria nodded uneasily.
“Three days now,” she said. “If Walleye needs something, he has June Zen get it for him. I think we should prohibit her seeing him for a time.”
“No,” Jon said. “Continue the test as it is a little longer.”
“I know you’re grateful for what he did for you,” Gloria said. “That is the obvious emotion—”
“I’m not going to discuss Walleye right now,” Jon said irritably. He changed positions yet again. “I want to know more about the conversion unit. I want to figure out its ultimate objective for the Nathan Graham.”
“We already know,” Gloria said. “It sought to assassinate you.”
“That was a single objective. Was it the key one, though?”
Gloria appeared surprised.
“It had to be,” she said. “It could never have escaped the conference chamber intact after killing you. It was on a one-way mission.”
“A suicide mission,” Jon said.
“Is that the right way to say it?”
Jon shook his head. He didn’t understand the question.
“Can a computer—no matter how intelligent—commit suicide?” Gloria asked. “Clearly, it can self-destruct or take an action that leads to its destruction. That’s not the same thing as suicide. It’s a machine. It’s not alive. Only living things can actually commit suicide.”
“For all intents and purposes,” Jon said, “the AIs appear to be alive.”
“That’s a deception,” Gloria said. “By their very nature, machines are not biological. Thus—”
Ghent cleared his throat.
“If you’ll pardon the intrusion,” the Chief Technician said, “what is the definition of life?”
“Plants and animals,” Gloria said.
“Are viruses alive?” Ghent asked.
“Chief Technician,” Gloria asked, “are you of all people—a believer—saying that the thinking machines are alive?”
“I don’t know.” Ghent indicated the display case. “The conversion unit certainly controlled Samuel Latterly as if it were alive. Does it matter, then, what we technically believe life is supposed to—”
“It matters a great deal,” Gloria said, interrupting. “If it is a living thing, it can commit suicide. That matters given the conversion unit’s goal of assassinating Jon. If it wasn’t really alive but just mimicked life, then it could not have committed suicide. Then it was just like a drone’s computer that zeroes in on a target and explodes the warhead it’s guiding and ends up destroying itself in the process.”
“You’re posing a metaphysical question,” Jon said. “How is that germane to the problem at hand?”
Gloria blinked several times.
“We’re attempting to understand the…psychology of the AIs,” she said, “so we can anticipate them better.”
“Okay,” Jon said, nodding. “That makes sense. Sun Tzu said that to defeat your foe, you must know yourself and know your enemy. Maybe this isn’t as much a metaphysical problem as a strategic one.”
“Was Sun Tzu Buddhist?” Ghent asked with distaste.
“Sun Tzu was an ancient Chinese strategist,” Jon said. “He coined some of the greatest aphorisms and sayings on war that anyone ever penned. They’ve held true for thousands of years. I have no idea what his religious beliefs were.”
At that point, Ghent appeared to lose interest in the subject.
“It would appear that the robots want to kill you specifically,” Gloria said.
Jon rubbed his chin.
“I can’t say that I disagree,” Jon said. “When did the conversion unit arrive? It seems robot pods landed and attached to our hull when we were at the edge of the Asteroid Belt a while ago.”
“I agree,” Gloria said.
“Okay,” Jon said. “If that’s true—that they want me dead so badly—why did they botch the original attempt on the asteroid?”
“That’s simple,” Gloria said. “You and Benz foiled their attempt.”
“Maybe…”
“You pulled some slick maneuvers at the asteroid, remember?” Gloria said.
Jon rubbed the back of his neck as he frowned.
“You don’t agree?” Gloria asked.
“I have a gut feeling about this,” Jon said. “When I try to sleep, my thoughts go back to that day, that night, whatever it was. The robots—the octopoids—had us dead to rights. I mean, if I’d run the ambush, I would have killed Benz and me easily. Now, if that’s true, why couldn’t the robots have done the same thing?”
“Because you’re the man who can beat the robots,” Gloria said. “Your actions have proven that over and over. There’s something about you that gives you an edge against the robots. They must have finally figured that out. Thus, you’ve become a primary target for them.”
“That all sounds logical,” Jon said.
“That’s because it is.”
Jon grinned at Gloria, nodding.
“We need to scour the hull again,” Jon said a moment later. “But this time, I want people out there going over the hull inch by inch.”
“With a ship this size, that’s going to take some time.”
“We have the time right now,” Jon said. “Besides, this will give the new recruits some extra space training.”
“Some of the men might not like being out in hyperspace,” Gloria said.
Jon shrugged, causing him wince and touch the shoulder cast.
“I think the robots are playing a devious game,” Jon said in a strained voice. “I can feel it. I simply can’t accept that I was the main target this time. It doesn’t sit right with me. How else can I explain my unease?”
Gloria said nothing.
“Was there anything else you wanted to add about the conversion unit?” Jon asked Ghent.
The Chief Technician shook his head.
Jon rubbed the shoulder cast one more time before turning toward the hatch.
“I’m going to talk to the Centurion about the space-walk exercise,” Jon said. “We need to find out what the robots are trying to hide from us.”
-21-
Despite protests from Gloria, Ghent and the med team monitoring his shoulder, Jon donned a battlesuit and went outside with his marines to search for more robot stealth pods.
The Centurion had acknowledged the danger of Jon going outside during hyperspace and with an injured shoulder. But the former Black Anvil sergeant also understood why the commander wanted and needed to do it. Going outside in a strange element with his soldiers was good for the regiment’s morale.
That didn’t lessen Jon’s disquiet as the airlock hatch slid open. He’d gone through orientation just like the others had done. He knew what to ex
pect, as he’d seen hyperspace on a screen. It was different while in a battlesuit on a hull and with his injury traveling through the weird realm.
Jon forced himself to quit gawking and move. There were others waiting behind him. With his magnetic clamps always holding onto the hull before he detached a different limb, he moved step by step across the vast expanse.
The hull was pitted and marked and sometimes blocked by housing due to the cybership’s long existence. The majority of the marks had been formed by colliding space debris, most of it extremely small. Some of the pitting came from molten metal sizzling against the hull during battle and laser, particle beam or even gravitational ray strikes. The indentations had come from solid enemy munitions, such as penetrators, PD warheads and accelerated matter.
The bumps could be sensor nods or armored casing hiding PD guns, missile launch-points or cannon coverings. The housing held the gravitational cannons and various types of exotic sensors.
In any case, the pitting, humps, bumps and housing created hundreds of thousands of places to hide something small and inconspicuous. Like the behemoths of the Earth’s ocean—whales—the cyberships carried space “barnacles” and other manifestations of its long existence.
All that was bad enough…
Jon looked up where the stars should be. He froze then, froze solid, as if he were in shock or consternation.
Hyperspace had a seething black-red background that seemed to be forever shifting and moving while appearing to be perfectly still. It did not make sense to Jon’s brain. Perhaps that’s what caused the shock. It felt wrong to him. That wrongness made it seem evil.
Something banged against his suit. His comm phones crackled before smoothing out.
“Don’t look up, sir. It’s not good for the eyes.”
Jon continued to stare nonetheless.
The bang proved harder the next time.
“Sir, I’m ordering you to look away.”
Slowly, Jon Hawkins blinked inside his helmet. He moved his lip. The sergeant’s words seemed to penetrate his mind. Ever so slowly, he moved his helmet, forcing himself to look down at his feet.
He panted a second later. He coughed and cleared his throat.
“Sir?” the marine sergeant said. The battlesuited individual stood beside him. He’d been hitting Jon’s suit with a balled glove from his suit.
“Thanks,” Jon muttered. “Have you been out here before?”
“Several times, sir,” the sergeant said. “It takes some getting used to.”
“Did the Centurion put you with me?”
“That he did, sir.”
“I see. That means out of all the men, you know how to deal with hyperspace the best.”
“I guess so, sir.”
“What’s your secret?” Jon asked.
“Mainly, I don’t look at it.”
“You have to look up some time.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but you don’t. But if you happen to look up, let your eyesight blur. Don’t take too good a look at it.”
“Doesn’t the weirdness of hyperspace make you curious?”
“It does, sir.”
“But you don’t look?”
“You might say I’m stubborn, sir.”
“Right,” Jon said. “Well, let’s get to work.”
“Yes, sir,” the marine sergeant said. “Are you and me going to be searching the hull like the others, or are we going to be wandering around and seeing how people are doing?”
“What did the Centurion tell you?”
“To do whatever you said as long as it wasn’t too dangerous.”
“He tell you to tell me that?”
“That he did, sir,” the sergeant said.
“Bet you never thought of the Centurion as a mother hen.”
“I think of him as a right good bastard, sir. He’s one man I don’t want to cross.”
“Right,” Jon said. “We’re going to check up on the others. You ready?”
“I am, sir.”
Jon looked around and pointed.
“We’ll start by heading in that direction…”
***
The regiment scoured the hull for 74 hours, working in shifts.
They lost three marines during that time.
One man gave himself too many stims. None of the battlesuits was supposed to have stims. The man had disobeyed orders, forcing a supply sergeant to give him what he wanted.
The Centurion dealt with the supply sergeant, demoting him back to private second class in a penal platoon.
The second man suffocated because he forgot to recycle to a new air-tank.
The last casualty occurred due to psychotic derangement. The marine turned his gyroc on himself, blowing a hole in his helmet.
After that, a corporal bumped up against something he couldn’t see. Only when he used thermal sighting did he discover a rounded object before him.
At that point, the object opened like a flower.
The corporal backed away with magnetic clumps, raised his gyroc rifle and shot at the hard object with spidery metallic legs. Just before the thing reached him, the corporal must have hit a critical function, causing the robot to freeze.
Shortly thereafter, drones appeared, lifted the attached stealth pod and brought it to a special hangar bay.
Jon did not call off the search, however. He kept the regiment outside another 15 hours, losing two more marines.
Finally, the Centurion told Jon the regiment had completed a thorough physical search over every inch of the cybership’s outer hull. At that point, Jon reluctantly ended the space-walking exercise and brought everyone back inside.
By that time, Bast Banbeck believed he was on the verge of an amazing discovery…
-22-
The huge Sacerdote rubbed his face. He was tired, spiritually numb and desirous of nothing more than lying in his quarters, watching comedies and drinking the hard Scotch whiskey he’d received from a supply officer.
Bast much preferred the hard liquor to beer. He liked the taste of beer and did not care for the harshness of the whiskey. What he loved about the whiskey was the release from his inner worries, from his plain homesickness.
He had been fine while in the Solar System. Jon Hawkins and his compatriots had done marvels against the robots. While in the Solar System, Bast had held onto his old beliefs from a simpler time before the AIs, and those beliefs had given him solace.
Perhaps if he’d stayed in the Solar System, he would have remained fine. It was a spiritual problem, Bast believed. The humans had beaten the robots twice. Because of that, he felt safe in the Solar System. Elsewhere, the AI robots ruled. If that wasn’t bad enough, the AIs could insert control devices into a brain. Even more sinister, the AIs often chopped off a person’s head and yet kept the head and brain alive, enslaving the head to do their bidding.
Bast hated that about the AIs, as he feared such a dreadful fate. Sometimes, he wondered if the correct solution was to kill himself so he would never fall prey to the enemy. Yet, according to his religious beliefs, self-death meant he would go the Underworld of Torment instead of to Paradise.
That meant Bast had to risk living while in the realm of the AIs. He had to risk enslavement by the metallic demons. The fear of that had enveloped his heart, had begun to deeply affect him and his work.
Beer helped relieve some of the pressure. The whiskey, however, proved an amazing find, a great solace that walled off his worries with a fog of comfortably deep numbness.
Bast had learned to love being drunk. However, he also felt what he believed was an irrational guilt concerning his drunkenness.
No Sacerdote in the home system would have ever thought to drink alcohol. Certainly, some healers had used alcohol to clean wounds. But to guzzle such a substance—
The humans were clever apes indeed. More than that, the humans had proven themselves as vicious fighters. Who would have ever thought that such a primitive and savage species could hand several defeat
s to the all-conquering AIs?
“Do you want to look at this?” a thin technician with budding breasts asked Bast.
The seven-foot alien rubbed his face again. He wore a huge white lab coat and mingled among other scientists attempting to crack the AI computer core taken off the hull earlier.
“I do,” Bast told her.
“I thought as much,” the tech said. She pushed a mobile unit to his computer console and hooked it up. Afterword, she sat on Bast’s huge stool and manipulated the controls. Finally, she jumped up and smiled.
“It’s ready,” she said.
Bast forced himself to smile back. He hated the AIs. He also understood their deadliness. He wasn’t sure the humans fully did.
Sitting at the controls, Bast went to work.
He adjusted the screen tirelessly, attempting approaches the human scientists would have never thought of.
Two hours later, he rubbed his eyes, got up and read a few reports from the others. This was interesting. It was a strange line of electronic inquiry. The results—
Bast turned fast, striding back to his console. A few of the other scientists working in the large lab looked up at him and then went back to their screens.
Bast sat, cracked his oversized knuckles and hunched over his screen. He tapped, regarded the data, tapped again—
He sat back sharply. On the screen, a large black circle merged with a smaller white dot. He’d been trying to merge them for hours. This was a breakthrough, revealing possible communication with the AI unit core.
Strange script appeared on the screen.
Bast pressed a tab.
Robotic sounds emerged from a speaker.
Bast tapped and typed frantically. He had to—
“I will repeat the query one more time,” a robotic-sounding voice said from a computer speaker.
Bast scratched a cheek. What was the best way to respond to this? He didn’t know. The robotic voice jogged a fearful memory. The—
Slyly, Bast looked both ways. The scientists and lab assistants worked tirelessly. No one seemed to be watching him.
The huge Sacerdote opened his lab coat and took a small silver container from an inner breast pocket. He twisted the cap, sniffed the Scotch whiskey inside and took an extra-large swallow.
A.I. Battle Station (The A.I. Series Book 4) Page 8